JISC PoWR poster

Preservation Challenges For Web Sites The JISC PoWR project, provided by UKOLN and ULCC Your first point of contact should be the JISC PoWR blog at <http://jiscpowr.jiscinvolve.org/>. For further information please contact Marieke Guy at M.Guy@ukoln.ac.uk or Edward Pinsent at E.Pinsent@ulcc.ac.uk. Topics Addressed On The JISC PoWR Blog An Institutional Case Study Background An invitation to submit proposals to organise a number of workshops and to produce a handbook that specifically addresses digital preservation issues that are relevant to the UK HE/FE web management community was issued by the JISC in February 2008. See <http://www.jisc.ac.uk/fundingopportunities/funding_calls/2008/01/ preservationwebresources.aspx>. Successful Bid Awarded to UKOLN and ULCC

The joint bid submitted by UKOLN and ULCC based on:

Hosting three workshops around the UK

Engagement with the web management & records management communities

Use of a blog as a means of engaging with interested parties during the project (and also after the project funding finishes)

A report on best practices for the preservation of Web resources

What Next For You?

Read the JISC PoWR report

Identify and engage with the key stakeholders in your institution

Subscribe to the JISC PoWR blog in order to keep up-to-date with developments

If you have something to share, why not write a guest blog post for the JISC PoWR blog

Created 4 March 2009 The Challenges

The importance of preservation of digital resources is acknowledged by JISC who have funded significant numbers of activities in this area. However the preservation of Web resources and Web services provides new challenges:

The ubiquity of the Web

The complicated interaction of resources and services

The preservation challenges of the location of a resource (its URI) in addition to the resource itself

The popularity of Web 2.0 services is providing additional challenges for those engaging in preservation activities:

The more complex interactions provided by technologies such as AJAX

The ease of syndicating content across multiple environments through use of RSS and Atom

The even more complicated rights issues associated with the ownership of user-generated content

Contact details

How should an institution seek to preserve the blogs published by staff and students?

“ Easy”, you may think. “Just install an open source blogging platform locally and you’ll be able to preserve blogs posts like any other digital resource”.

But what if:

Significant blogs were established by staff in departments before an institutional service was established?

Staff and students don’t use the institutional service, preferred to use third party services?

Blogs contain embedded objects from services such as YouTube, Flickr and Slideshare?

You wish to preserve blog comments as well as the original blog posts?

Read the JISC PoWR handbook and JISC PoWR blog to find out more about the challenges of preservation in a Web 2.0 environment.

Web 2.0: A Technical Case Study Members of the JISC PoWR project team used the team blog as a means of engaging with the user community. Topics addressed in the blog included preservation in a Web 2.0 context (e.g. blogs, wikis, Twitter, etc.); best practices for the termination of project Web sites; reasons for developing and implementing Web preservation policies; etc. Comments are enabled on the blog, so if you would like to engage in further discussions and debate on these topics, or other issues related to the preservation of Web resources, we invite you to join in with the discussions. Find out more about the JISC PoWR project at: http://jiscpowr.jiscinvolve.org/ Short URL: http://go.bath.ac.uk/powr How has your institutional home page changed since your Web site was launched? And how do these changes reflect not only rapid technological innovations but also how your institution sees itself and its relationship with a wider community? These were questions addressed by Alison Wildish, Head of Web Services and Lizzie Richmond, FOI and Data Protection Coordinator at the University of Bath. Visit the JISC PoWR blog in order to view Alison and Lizzie’s slides – you can even listen to an audio of their presentation.